Discusses plants that will save water, encourage bird/butterflies and create lush effects in So Cal gardens ---includes various ecological subjects.

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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Labor Day and beyond: Fall planting. A recipe for chicken.

Remember the Inca Calendar? Here they are doing the fall sowing.

Here we are on the central coast about 500 years later, doing the same thing. This is, as SoCal gardeners know, is the primo planting time for a great many plants---leafy vegetables, perennials, anything but real tropicals, and surprisingly ---succulents.This Confederate Rose has managed to produce seven new offshootsin a month.

The medusa cristata is flinging out green fingers and a whole new leaf is developing to the left.

This mammalaria is not only blooming but growing a whole new orb as quickly as it can.

If you are planning a large planting of succulents, this would be the time.

It's hard to get away from the garden long enough to write ! Lettuce, red cabbage, Napa cabbage, mustard spinach (Tatoi) cilantro, late tomatoes and a couple more chile peppers (ever the optimitist, hedging bets.) All of them are sitting in an indignant group outside the back door insisting on getting in the groundnow.
Remember the lime tree that lost its leaves and had to be draped in Christmas lights to stay warm last winter? Here he is--recovered, with limes growing... well, okay, only 2 limes, but still......

AVM is an account of a year her family spent raising all their food, eating off the land. If you read it, you'll be shocked, and hopefully, inspired. (Why do you think all those vegetables are sitting outside my back door?)

Here is a spendid recipe using all local ingredients for chicken thighs with honey, olives and oregano. .